In the movies, Canada never gets a break. Just read Pierre Berton's almost pathologically well-researched (and very funny) book "Hollywood's Canada" and noted in my recent review of Rose Marie, he outlines Canada's penchant for offering up its anus to any two-bit non-Canadian huckster in exchange for the equivalent of coloured beads. In Berton's book, we learn how the Canadian government gave away its aspirations to manufacture an indigenous film culture (save for National Film Board of Canada documentaries) with the promise from all the major studios in Hollywood that Canada would be featured prominently as a setting in Hollywood films to promote tourism to Canada.

The product yielded from this were mostly B-movie westerns that portrayed voyageurs as boozing lechers looking primarily for white women to rape (since they get "it" easily from Native women), peaceful Canadian Plains Indians as blood-thirsty psychos wildly attacking wagon trains, geographical locations completely unlike what they were in reality and pole-up-the-butt Mounties bent on "getting their man". Burton details over 600 such films in his book.

Berton even gives examples of how Hollywood got their fingers into the pie of Britain's indigenous film industry during the "quota quickie" period (where unscrupulous Brits generated micro-budgeted trash to appease the government quotas, yet still make money) by hiring a puppet Canadian to be the "producer", use Hollywood-based British talent - on and behind the camera - and then to collect the financing and profits. This was an especially easy way to exploit Britain as well as Canada since anything made in Canada, counted as British, since Canada was essentially a colony belonging to the monarchy.

Never Take Candy From a Stranger is a low-budget Hammer production from Britain. It's not a western, nor is it a British "quota quickie".

It is, however, set in Canada.

And while, as the film's narrator tells us, this story could be set anywhere, we will see the tawdry events unfold in Canada.

And what, you ask, is the tawdry event?

CHILD MOLESTATION!!!!!

Yes indeed - child molestation in Canada! Eastern Canada, to be precise. What the makers of the film mean by Eastern Canada is somewhat unclear since that would place the film in the rugged, rocky landscape of inbred territory in the Maritimes. Funny though, it looks like the backlot of Bray Studios - in Mother England - NOT in the Dominion of Canada. An Eastern Canadian setting in the fiddle-playing environs of the Maritimes would also mean that the child molestation was, in reality, being carried out by Roman Catholic priests upon young boys in orphanages and reform schools. This is nowehere on display in the picture. As well, none of the law enforcement people in the film appear to be the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but are in fact, a lot like sheriffs and state troopers from the good old Red, White and Blue below the 49th parallel.

No matter, Canada it is. Britain has always had a long history of misrepresenting their own colony in the Great White North. One of my favourites wass Powell-Pressburger's "The 49th Parallel" which depicted Nazis entering Canada via U-Boat through Hudson's Bay, encountering a Quebecois fur trapper played by Laurence Olivier, dining in the swinging city of Winnipeg, hooking up with some Mennonites on the prairies, encountering a war-weary non-patriot in Lake Louise, played by Leslie Howard and finally, an American soldier played by the Canadian actor Raymond Massey.

But, I digress.

We open with little Sally Carter (genuinely well played by Gwen Watford) as she plays with a new chum. Sally is a new arrival to this Eastern Canadian enclave of perversion. The gentle rough-housing between the two girls leads to Sally losing 35¢ in the grass. She laments that this was to be her candy allowance for the week. Her all-knowing new friend helpfully offers to take her to a place where they can both get all the free candy they want. Lo and behold, just behind them is a creepy old mansion and from a top window we discover they are being spied on by a foul, dirty old man, Clarence Olderberry (Felix Aylmer).

Later that evening, Sally admits to her parents that she and her friend went to visit a kind old man for candy and stripped naked for him and did a little dance. Dad (Patrick Allen) is furious. He is the new principal of the school in this small town (though it looks reasonably urban) and he is a square-jawed type looking for justice. When he visits the local constabulary, he's told not to press charges since the old man really didn't "do anything" to the children. They also mention that the old man is essentially the patriarch of the town - responsible for starting its chief industry. He's been a highly influential citizen and well respected. Besides, the sheriff/state-trooper/constable/RCMP-officer adds, Olderberry's son, Clarence Jr. (CANADIAN ACTOR Bill Nagy) will use all his power to make their lives miserable and defend his Dad which will end in complete acquittal for the disgusting, slavering old lecher who, as it turns out, has quite a long history of child molestation that's been hushed up.

Peter is even more intent than ever to press charges and go to trial. From there, we go to an extremely intense courtroom battle, followed by a beautifully directed sequence of nail-biting suspense.

Canadian flubs aside, I really have to say this movie was a great find. The scenario as depicted more-than-adequately, depicts how child molestation was, for far too long, ignored, repressed and misunderstood. As well, far beyond its time period, it shockingly and frankly depicts the horrors that victims of sexual violence go through during a trial where unscrupulous defence lawyers will pin blame and shame upon them instead of their repulsive clients who deserve a bullet between the eyes rather than the mollycoddling afforded to them.

Cyril Frankel's direction is lean and mean. In addition to directing endless hours of British cop, crime and sci-fi TV series, he also delivered one of the most terrifying and sadly underrated Hammer Horror pictures of all time, The Witches as well as The Trollenberg Terror, one of the trippiest genre blenders you'll ever see. Never Take Candy From a Stranger barrels along with the force of a souped-up GTO engine and the suspense set piece at the end is worthy of J. Lee Thompson's school "chase" between the Bob Mitchum's brutal rapist and Greg Peck's daughter in Cape Fear. It might actually dazzle further as certain twists and turns during this final sequence inNever Take Candy From a Stranger had me on the edge of my seat until the devastating resuts. Add to the stew some truly rich cinematography from the legendary Freddie (The Straight Story, The Elephant Man, his first Oscar win Sons and Lovers and his second Oscar win Glory) Francis and you have an intelligent, suspenseful, powerful and slam-bang little thriller.

On a side note, one of Canada's greatest stage, television and voice veterans, Budd Knapp, appears in a small supporting role. Mother England was always happy to toss us colonial savages a few bones.

"Never Take Candy From a Stranger" is currently available on the 3-disc DVD set entitled "Icons of Horror - Hammer Studios" from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. This review originally appeared in a slightly different form at Daily Film Dose.

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Guide to Star Ratings

***** Masterpiece

**** Excellent

***1/2 Very Good

*** Good

**1/2 Not Bad

** Whatever

*1/2 Poor

* Raw Sewage

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Reviews written by Greg Klymkiw, a Canadian filmmaker, journalist and teacher who contributes regularly to "Daily Film Dose" and "Electric Sheep". Like a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), new and classic movies (Canadian, foreign and independent) will be subject to an organic compound of cinema criticism, a delectably volatile derivative of methane and ethane. Within this special corner be prepared for the thrust of Klymkiw's sword.

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